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Thursday, 20 April 2017

Turkey’s Erdogan says he is not a dictator & What is to be done?

Crosstalk:
Victorious Erdogan

Turkish
President Erdogan got what he has long coveted – a popular mandate
to legitimize his towering presence in the country’s politics and
social life. His critics call him a modern Sultan. Does Erdogan’s
victory only divide the country more?

CrossTalking
with Guney Yildiz, Bill Park, and Martin Jay.

Turkey’s
Erdogan says he is not a dictator & What is to be done? Gregory
Copley @defense & Foreign Affairs

Turkey’s
Erdogan says he is not a dictator & What is to be done? Gregory
Copley @defense & Foreign Affairs

Analysis.
By GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Staff. Turkey’s April 16,
2017, manipulated referendum granting dictatorial powers to the
President may be the most significant and transformative change in
Eurasia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa since the collapse of
the USSR in 1990-91, despite the fact that Turkey’s economy is
itself in decline and its population divided to the point of civil
war.

The
transformation of Turkey from a parliamentary system, with the
Government functioning under a Prime Minister, to an executive
presidency has ended the Westernized democracy envisaged by Mustafa
Kemal Atatürk, introduced by the Grand National Assembly on March 3,
1924.

[See:
“Turkey’s President Plans to Unleash New Flow of Illegals into
Europe” in Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, 3-2017,
and Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis of March 30,
2017,for a details of the changes.]

Pres.
Reçep Tayyip Erdoğan has now embarked on a revival of Ottomanism
and a Turk-centric caliphate which is being cloaked, to a degree, by
modern trappings. Assessments by the International Strategic Studies
Association, publisher of GIS and Defense & Foreign Affairs
Special Analysis, indicate that the process by which Pres. Erdoğan
reached this point was carefully scripted, including the manipulated
“false coup” of July 15-16, 2016, which gave the impetus for him
to purge the system and society of many of his opponents. The growing
politicization of all legal and security elements in Turkey enabled
him then to strongly structure the way in which the April 16, 2017,
referendum would take place.

What
is significant is that, even with all of the fraud (much of which was
documented as it occurred by international observers) which
accompanied the referendum, Mr Erdoğan was only able to scrape
through his “victory”. That victory, however, has polarized
Turkish society, and may presage a decade or more of internal
conflict, or, indeed, some genuine attempts at a new military coup if
sufficient cohesion remains in the Turkish Armed Forces.